The dwarf Merrill sat on the ogre's shoulder, his eyes lifelessly gazing at the sky above his head.
No, there was no sky there, only a gloomy gray-white, like buffalo milk mixed with pepper - it looked a bit strange, and its taste was even more so, just like this forest.
Yes, this forest was even stranger. Merrill had seen a seemingly unremarkable vine suck a rabbit as big as a dog into jerky; he had also seen a pair of pointed shoes lying like garbage at a tree root, occasionally moving as if something was still wearing them; and even a bird with a skeleton face on its wings had followed them all the way, just in the depths of the mist, neither far nor near.
When they moved forward, the bird flew; when they stopped, the bird also rested its wings. Until a pair of dry claws hidden among the dense leaves dragged the bird that had been following them for some reason into the shade of the tree, after a chaotic fluttering, there was a death-like silence...
